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July 24, 2018

A friendly brief on the intersection of Eighth Amendment juvenile sentencing jurisprudence and the federal sentencing guidelines

I was pleased to have as one project this summer helping to draft an amicus brief in support of a Ninth Circuit en banc petition in US v. Riley Briones. In a split decision handed down in May, a panel of the Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court adoption of the the federal sentencing guidelines as the key factor in the course imposing a life without parole federal sentence on a juvenile offender. The panel opinion is available at this link, with Judge Johnnie Rawlinson authoring the majority opinion (joined by district judge David Ezra) and Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain authoring the dissent.

The amicus brief which can be downloaded below argues, in short form, that “It is unreasonable — and unconstitutional — for a court to routinely apply the Sentencing Guidelines when a defendant is subject to a Guideline sentencing range of life without parole for a crime committed as a juvenile.” In longer form, here is the start of the brief's "Summary of Argument":

The Supreme Court’s Eighth Amendment jurisprudence has long stressed that youth must matter in sentencing. Nearly four decades ago, in Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U.S. 104 (1982), the Supreme Court, explaining why an offender’s age and maturity is critical to any assessment of just punishment, stressed that “youth is more than a chronological fact” and that “minors often lack the experience, perspective, and judgment expected of adults.” Id. at 115–16.  More recently, in a line of cases beginning with Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005) (holding that the Eighth Amendment forbids execution of juvenile offenders), and extending now through Montgomery v. Louisiana, 136 S. Ct. 718 (2016) (holding that the Eighth Amendment forbids sentencing a juvenile offender to life without parole unless his crime reflects irreparable corruption), the Court has developed substantive and procedural rules to operationalize the Eighth Amendment mandate that “children are constitutionally different from adults for purposes of sentencing.” Id. at 733 (quoting Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460, 471 (2012)); accord Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48, 68 (2010).  This constitutional principle flows from the reality that children, compared to adults, are less mature, more susceptible to negative influences, and more capable of reform — and so any penological justifications for the harshest adult punishments “collapse in light of ‘the distinctive attributes of youth.’” Montgomery, 136 S. Ct. at 733–34 (quoting Miller, 567 U.S. at 472).  Thus, both sound sentencing policy and settled constitutional doctrine forbid a sentencing court from treating a juvenile as though he were an adult.

Yet that is precisely what the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines encourage sentencing courts to do.  Problematically, the Guidelines have no provisions that readily permit consideration of “the distinctive attributes of youth.”  The Guidelines — designed with adult offenders in mind — give no attention to any youth-related consideration in standard offense-level calculations, and they discourage consideration of age “in determining whether a departure is warranted” except in “unusual” cases. U.S.S.G. § 5H1.1.  Given that the Guidelines impart to sentencing courts a strong “anchoring” effect — as the Supreme Court has recognized, see Peugh v. United States, 569 U.S. 530, 541–42 (2013) — and that in a majority of cases judges do not deviate from the Guidelines range absent a government motion to do so, routine application of the Guidelines to juvenile offenders is fundamentally inconsistent with the Supreme Court’s Eighth Amendment jurisprudence.

The highly deferential standard of review that appellate courts apply to within-Guidelines sentences only exacerbates the tensions between standard Guideline-sentencing procedures and constitutional requirements.  Absent searching substantive review of Guidelines sentences, an appellate court risks endorsing a sentencing system that unconstitutionally discourages consideration of an offender’s youth and its attendant characteristics.  The Guidelines, if applied in their standard manner to a juvenile offender, thus result in a federal sentencing regime that is fundamentally inconsistent with the Eighth Amendment requirements articulated in Roper, Graham, Miller, and Montgomery.

Download FILED Briones Brief of Amici Curiae Criminal-Sentencing Scholars ISO Petition for Rehearing En Banc

A terrific pair of lawyers at Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein & Fox helped make this brief become a reality (and get filed), and I am also thankful to a group of academics who signed on to this brief.

July 24, 2018 at 05:26 PM | Permalink

Comments

Wow O’Scannlain dissented saying Miller was not properly applied?

Posted by: Calif appeals lawyer | Jul 25, 2018 6:32:44 PM

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